Tags
Affordable Care Act, Barack Obama, Chuck Hagel, John Kerry, Kathleen Sebelius, Nancy Pelosi, White House
After the October 1 advent of HealthCare.gov, The Affordable Care Act is in the news again. The whole thing would be an embarrassment if it weren’t so damaging to all of us:
The Abysmal, Pathetic Obamacare Rollout – The Daily Beast
ObamaCare’s Black Box – Wall Street Journal
Meantime, we see these propagandistic photo-ops from the White House. Believe me, the White House communications people would not allow these smiley faces to get out if they thought the images made the president or his ACA lieutenants look bad.
Barack has a cuddle with Kathy and Nancy.
On the contrary, images of this sort make all three people look terrible. Why do these two women allow him to treat them like that? Look at the paternalistic, “I’m your daddy and you’re my girls” grin on the president’s face. Even more amazing, look at the unabashed, I’m-so-happy body language of both women. This is how our government operates, with a group hug in some ornate, high-ceilinged room of the White House? At least the guy in the background, on the left, attends to business.
To get an idea of how sexist this photograph actually is, put John Kerry and Chuck Hagel in place of Kathleen Sebelius and Nancy Pelosi, with similar expressions and body language all around. All three politicians would be mortified. What kind of locker room chatter would that picture start? The communications people certainly wouldn’t push the photograph into the government’s propaganda stream.
Whenever politicians get too chummy, no matter what their gender, watch out. Watch your back, your front, your sides, and your wallet. They will come after you, and milk you until you’re too weak to be of any more use. That’s the ACA lesson of the day.
Quick quiz:
Do you associate single-payer system with free health care?
Do you associate fee-for-service with expensive health care?
What do you associate with Affordable Care Act?
Who is your daddy?
The Jeffersonian 
Aw, what a cute photo. It just begs for caricature. But nowhere near as moronic as GO(Tea)P congressmen grandstanding at the WWII Memorial and bullying NPS employees. One of far too many “Oh puh-lease!” moments this month.
On to the quiz, but first a fable (discovered in the dusty bowels of the newly re-opened Library of Congress):
Dick, Jane, and Spot need to buy a car. No dealership will tell them what it costs or exactly what features are included. Jane’s union/corporation has good connections with a dealer, so she gets a nice rebate and pays $30,000. Dick works at a fast food chain for minimum wage and no benefits. Sorry, no discount for you fella – Dick’s bill is $50,000. Spot barks, “#$%@ this,” travels to Canada or Europe, and buys the same car with fewer defects for $20,000.
Single payer system. Of course it’s not free. It has to be paid for somehow by income or payroll taxes and fees. It might well be a huge improvement over what we’ve got, though.
Fee for service. I associate that with hiring a plumber or taking music lessons and getting more or less what you pay for — not with our current incredibly wasteful, overpriced, opaque, and corrupt healthcare system (many hundreds of $B don’t go to waste every year without a lot of corruption, legal or otherwise). If free enterprise always worked so well, we’d all be singing the Internationale in school.
The ACA. I don’t mind if people call it Obamacare. He might as well get the credit (or blame). Hmm, should we call Medicare LBJ-care? The ACA is far, far from ideal. Maybe one day there’ll be a Congress that will actually attempt to improve the law instead of trying to trash it — or throwing one tantrum after another and taking out the government and economy if they don’t get their way.
My daddy? Big Papi. Go Sox!
Oh, and have a healthful day.
Outstanding comment! Thanks, Mike!